


Black Dye

by windandthestars



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, F/M, Tattoos, webisodes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windandthestars/pseuds/windandthestars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She had never marked herself in such a way, knowing with a life as long as hers how foolish that would be, but she had once had the opportunity to feel the weight of ink against her skin, full of intrinsic meaning, potential, possibility, and personality.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Dye

**Author's Note:**

> Set during the webisodes. 
> 
> For kink_bingo tattoos/tattooing

She's learned over the years to appreciate the seemingly random events, items, and people that call forth the quiet whisperings of memories from days long past. There's a fondness associated with most of these memories, and sparing only the most painful there's a quiet comfort that sets her lips twitching with private amusement. 

She hadn't expected Will, all but a stranger to her, to be the source of such merriment tonight, but she knows it's better not to attempt drawing connections between the slumbering form before her and the nagging insecurities of one of her oldest friends. It's not his personality that intrigues her most at the moment but the outlines of black ink against his pale skin.

She had never marked herself in such a way, knowing with a life as long as hers how foolish that would be, but she had once had the opportunity to feel the weight of ink against her skin, full of intrinsic meaning, potential, possibility, and personality.

It had been Nikola's idea, infiltrating the freakshow to rescue a pair of trapped abnormals. She would have been fine on her own, but Nikola with his mastery of electricity had been a better fit, no one would question him, but Helen had needed a bit of help to blend in. It had taken hours, icy cold ink on increasingly hot skin to paint glyphs and swirls, ancient symbols of power, Latin prayers, and the simplest of geometric shapes.

They had been incidental markings, meaningless at the time. They hadn't meant anything to her until later, until she realized how much that afternoon had washed away. She had been young then, still heartbroken, still questioning. It wasn't until much later she realized the unseen road map Nikola had traced across her skin.

She had chosen to let it fade away, the black dye washed from her skin in a matter of days. The memory of those lines like scars and bruises were still there, however, imprinted deeply within her mind: the swirls across her stomach replaced with stretch marks, the small flowers on her knees and elbows scars from botched missions and narrow escapes, the plea for forgiveness sat written deep within her heart. 

They would never sit upon the surface of her skin again, drawn by careful hand and watchful eye, but they were there. They hovered against muscle and bone, covered over layer by layer, youthful skin on an old battered heart.

It had been a long time since she had marveled at the careful consideration such an act would take. Ashley in her younger years had begged for a tattoo, pleaded incessantly and yet it's Will, now, that rekindles her fascination: the contours of the design she can't quite make out in the half lit room, the meaning she can't begin to unravel.

He'll be waking soon, and perhaps when he has tired of his own questions she'll be allowed a few of her own. She's hasn't much to ask. She supposes there's not much to know; things were always simpler with the young, but she's wanting to know all the same, wanting to ask what it is he sees written across her skin; what it is that had brought him to her, because as much as she knows, she knows there's so much more she can't see.


End file.
